


Love's Sole Effect

by eponine119



Category: Lost
Genre: 1970s, Established Relationship, F/M, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24947674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119
Summary: The week after Independence Day in 1976, Sawyer says to Juliet, “Let's let nature take its course.”
Relationships: Juliet Burke/James "Sawyer" Ford
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Love's Sole Effect

Love's Sole Effect  
by eponine119  
May 28, 2020 

The week after Independence Day in 1976, Sawyer says to Juliet, “Let's let nature take its course.” 

The ceiling fan swoops in lazy circles, sending air flowing down on them as they cuddle in bed. Her hair flutters in the artificial breeze, tickling his nose and mouth. His arm around her waist pulls her in a little bit tighter against him. 

“Are you sure?” she asks. 

When they first got together, he put up a fuss about her insistence on using condoms. He pointed out she was on the pill, and they were both clean. He didn't know about the island. 

“Yeah,” he says, and it's enough for her. A little surge of happiness she hadn't expected to feel runs through her and makes her breath catch. But then he sighs and lets go of her and rolls onto his back. 

She turns to face him. He's staring up at the ceiling. “Tell me,” she prompts. 

“I know you been thinkin' about it,” he says. He looks at her. “Is this what you want?” 

She hesitates. Because it's not her decision. It's their decision. They're in it together. “It's not just about what I want. But yes. I think – I might like having a baby with you.” It's scary to say the words out loud. 

She's thought about it. They've been together for two years. They're committed, and it works. She's thirty-five, though the question of age is complicated here in their situation. It seems only natural to think about it. 

“You make a pro/con list yet?” he asks. 

He's teasing, but there's a list in her head. It's been there for awhile. On one side is everything she's seen and everything they've been through. Her patients who died, who she was brought here to save but couldn't. And then there's the time travel mess, the Dharma Initiative, and the Island. 

But they've seen women get on the sub and come back two weeks later perfectly safe and happy. It might work. 

And it's James, and she loves him. 

“What changed your mind?” she asks him. When she explained to him, two years ago, about the island's hyperfertility effect, he'd made it clear he had no interest in getting her pregnant. 

“Time,” he says, and his eyes are dark. 

Thousands of miles away, when he was seven years old, his parents died last week. 

He'd sat alone on the porch and smoked the way he hadn't done since the plane crashed and drank more whiskey than was really a good idea, and hadn't said a word. She knew, and she was ready to listen, but she didn't know what to say. So the night passed in silence. 

It's not a coincidence. 

“Okay,” she says. 

He smiles, and she knows it's going to be all right. She curls up against his side and listens to the subtle swish of the fan until it's replaced by the heavy sighs of his slumber, and then she falls asleep. 

…

She puts her birth control pills in the back of her dresser drawer instead of throwing them away, just in case she needs them again. Their stash of condoms stays in the nightstand drawer. They've made this decision, but they could still change their minds. Go back to the safety of their old lives. 

“You ever thought about it before?” he asks her over breakfast one morning. 

“No,” she says. With the man she now thinks of as her first husband – with the implication that there will someday be a second husband – she knew it would be a terrible idea. She's pretty sure it never crossed Ed's mind, even as they spent their days in the lab, developing technology to help other people have babies. 

“You know I have a kid, right?” he says. 

“Yes,” she says softly. They've never spoken about it, but she knows. “Do you want to tell me about her?” 

“I don't know anything about her,” he says, and she knows the swagger is to hide his feelings. “My ex showed up one day with a picture and a name and told me she was mine.” He meets her eyes for a moment, then looks away again. “I wasn't exactly careful before I landed here on Supersperm Island.” He sighs. “Guess I won't ever know her, now.” 

“You never know,” Juliet says evenly. As though they still have some hope of getting back to their own time. She used to long to get off the island. They both did. Now that's easily possible, but they've never left. They just changed what it is they yearn for. 

“You have a sister,” he says. She knows he's thinking of his daughter, and how she'll be the sister to their child. Someday. “How many do you want?” 

“I hadn't thought much beyond this one.” This one, as though it's a certainty, as though it's real. 

“Boy or girl?” he asks her. 

“I don't mind,” she replies. “Which do you want?” 

She watches him consider the possibilities, and she's thinking about them too. They could be parents. She's in love with possibilities right now. 

“I don't know,” he says. “I'll take what comes out. What do you want to name it?” 

“It's too early for that,” she says. “There's not even an it yet.” 

“There could be,” he says, and he sounds so hopeful it hurts. He really wants this, she thinks, and it's a surprise to her every time. 

…

The days pass. The nights pass, too. He's different with her now. At first she thought maybe it was being set free, and that's good, but it's more than that. It's like he has a purpose now. He has a goal. 

The weeks pass. The cramps and the blood come right on schedule. She isn't surprised by them, but she's disappointed. She can't believe how disappointed she is. 

She starts to cry at dinner, and he looks at her, stunned and horrified. She puts her hands over her eyes because she can't stand to see the way it changes things when she has to tell him. He'll know soon enough, and it's so stupid to think it would happen right away. 

“I got my period,” she says. 

“Hey, ssshhh,” he says, wrapping her up in his thick, strong arms to comfort her. “At least we're havin' fun trying.” 

The second month she doesn't cry. 

The third month he says, “Anything worth havin' is worth waiting for.” Like it's a long con and this is all setup. 

“What if I'm messed up inside? From this place, from the island,” she asks him. 

“Then it don't happen,” he says. “You want to stop?” 

“No.” Because now she wants it too badly to abandon it. She knows he does, too. 

…

In November, she waits. She feels like she's holding her breath. Like she's caught a snowflake on her tongue and she's waiting for it to melt. 

“You're late,” Sawyer says, and there's a light in his eyes she's not sure she's ever seen before. 

She nods, afraid to open her mouth or speak the words. 

He pulls her into his arms and rubs his hand across her belly. They're both thinking there might be something there. Life. This new dream they have, together. 

“What do you want to name it?” he asks. 

“It's too soon,” she cautions. 

“Baby Carrie,” he says, teasing her. 

“Oh, God, no,” she protests, thinking about telepathic teenagers. 

“Like on Little House,” he says, even though she knows he said it because of her favorite book. 

“You and your Little House,” she taunts back. “Laura's not bad.” There was a television character she liked once named Laura. 

“Mary,” he says, with a hitch in his breath. It was his mother's name, she knows. He's started to recover, these past months since July, since the day it happened. But he would never be able to stand it. 

“Something more unique,” she suggests. 

“Romeo,” he offers. 

“Huckleberry,” she shoots back. 

“You think they got any of those pee on a stick things around?” he asks. “Know for sure?” 

She smiles. She kind of likes this feeling of waiting, of knowing but not knowing. “It might just be late.” 

“It's gonna be very late,” he says. “See you in July 1977 late.” His eyes go wide and wild to match his grin. 

“We'll see,” she says, but she's smiling. 

…

For two more weeks, they wait. They don't talk about it, but it's there between them. There's magic in not knowing, but every day she feels more sure. 

Juliet's thinking about going to see the doctor, and wondering if they still have to kill rabbits or if that was, as she hopes, just some archaic, horrific urban legend. She supposes she should know, from her former life, but she was never one for history. Which is funny, now. 

The cramps start on a Tuesday afternoon while she's at work. 

They're just regular cramps, and when she goes to the bathroom, it's just regular blood. 

She leans against the bathroom wall, wanting to dissolve into tears. But she washes her face and gives herself a lecturing look in the mirror and then goes back to work. 

She doesn't know how to tell him. 

She feels like they're being punished for daring to want something. 

He knows as soon as he sees her, though, when he comes home and finds her in the kitchen cooking dinner in her bare feet like she always does. She turns to look at him and he says her name. 

“Just late,” she says, and then presses her lips together so hard because she's not going to cry. So she was wrong. 

Sawyer nods and lets his breath out slowly. He looks like he needs to hold on to her, but she doesn't go to him. By the time she sits down at the table, he's got his expression set too. “So we didn't win the first time we played,” he says. “We'll keep trying.” 

She nods, but she's thinking that somehow it won't be the same. 

She's thinking it won't happen. That she's broken inside. She lies in bed next to him with her body aching. In the darkness, he clutches her against him and she feathers her fingers through his hair while he cries. They're big sobs that have needed to come out for the last thirty years, for the past four months, and she absorbs them into her skin. 

…

Their lives go back to normal. This is normal, now. They don't say they're trying anymore. They don't think about it or tease or hope. If it happens, it happens. If not, well, they haven't lost anything they didn't have before. Her pills stay in the back of the drawer and he slides into her, skin against skin. But they don't count the days anymore. 

Juliet just marks the months off as they pass. 

1977 arrives and they party at the new year. 

Amy and Horace announce they're expecting a baby in July. That one hurts, more than she thinks it should, but she just smiles because what else can she do? She's happy for her friends. 

Sawyer brings her a pizza for Valentine's Day instead of chocolate or flowers and somehow it's perfect. 

Spring comes, but spring on the island is the same as all the other seasons. 

“It's not going to work,” she whispers to him in the weakness of the night. It's okay, she tells herself, she didn't want it anyway. He just holds her tighter. Fucks her harder. Kisses her more gently. If it's never going to happen, there's no reason to worry about it. 

It's been a year.

Around Independence Day, she starts to feel it again. The soreness in her chest and the turning of her stomach. She closes her eyes tight in the shower and almost wishes it away, because it's never going to happen for them and she doesn't want to go through it again. 

She doesn't want to put him through it again. She still feels him crying against her, all those months ago. She never wants him to have to cry like that again, not because of her. 

So she does what she's always been so good at, and that's pretend. They get up and go to work and come home and make love, and then do it all again tomorrow. 

She should tell him. She delivers Amy's baby and she almost tells him then, except Jin is sitting there on the porch of the infirmary with him and she can't. He brings her a flower and tells her she's amazing and he carries her off to bed like he used to in the old days. 

She'll tell him in the morning, she decides, as she curls up to sleep against him. The ceiling fan swishes softly and she fits her knees into the backs of his knees and rests her head against his back, holding him. 

“It worked.” That's what she was going to say. Except the telephone rang, and he went running off before she had the chance. 

The telephone rang, and Jack and Kate were back, and all their hopes and dreams vanished with a gunshot, with a look, with one dazzling, brilliant flash of white light. 

(end)


End file.
